Importance of Health & Safety at Workplace

If we look at ILO statistics, there are more than 270 million accidents and 160 million occupational diseases each year. About two million people die every year from occupational accidents and occupational diseases .Nearly 4% of worlds gross domestic product is lost each year through the cost of injury, death, absence etc.

Now just think about serious accident happening at your organisation. Think about the injured workers, their personal cost, pain and suffering and the effect on their families. Workers may have long hospital stays and may never be able to work again.
If its shown that the accident happened because of failure to manage health and safety risk in the organisation, the regulatory body may take action, which may lead to prosecution, fines, imprisonment and even injury compensation claim from injured person, alongside other direct and indirect costs.

Consequently there are three main reasons to maintain and promote health and safety:

Moral: Its not acceptable for workers to suffer injury and ill health as a result of doing their job. Because the society expects that everyone person go to the work for earning and not on the consequence of ill health or injury. So, demonstrating that the organisation cares about staff safety and health will lead to a happier and more protective workforce.

Legal: The law requires responsible people in organisation to assess reasonably foreseeable risk from the company activities and to put in place control measures that will reduce the risk- so far as is reasonably practicable.after all its the companies that create the risks.

Economic:
In case of accident at workplace can lead to both direct and indirect cost which may or may not be insured at all. Also a reputation as a health and safety conscious employer can also open doors for gaining new business and retaining staff.

Hence, looking after Health and Safety matters makes a good business sense.